


she who is best prepared

by maybetwice



Category: Legally Blonde (Movies)
Genre: Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Test anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:23:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/maybetwice
Summary: Vivian thought law school was the worst part about becoming a lawyer. She was wrong.





	she who is best prepared

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nausicaa_lives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_lives/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!! I loved the idea of getting into a friendfic for Elle and Vivian, whose friendship we only really get to see in the margins of the original movie, and the chance to see them struggling through a mutually hellish time. But, you know, getting through it together.
> 
> The title is a riff on a quote attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration."

The morning after her last graduation party, a champagne-fueled affair that she only mostly remembers, Vivian wakes to both a raging wine headache and a fervent wish that she had chosen any career path but law. Two words written in red block letters on her desk calendar that marked the sequel to the horrors of law school, the revenge of all her ambitions.

_Bar prep._

She’d known it was coming, but it had seemed abstract and far off, and surely it can’t be any worse than coursework. Right?

_Not._

Vivian does what she’d done dozens of times when confronted with a daunting and insurmountable obstacle in the last two years: she calls Elle.

“Oh,” Elle chirps on the other end, between a rustling noise that can only be Elle moving her new Blackberry from one ear to the other. “You’re not worried about that, are you?” 

She sounds effortlessly chipper, like she’s already gone for her six mile run and had her morning venti-quad-extra-dry-nonfat-cappuccino. Like she wasn’t out until 2 in the morning teaching Vivian’s dad how to do tequila shots. 

“Ugh,” says Vivian. 

“Well, don’t you worry one little bit.” Another rustling sound of her hair against the microphone. “I drew up our study schedules, with built in breaks – research shows that you can’t retain any information if you don’t disengage with the material every now and then – and a meal plan. Have coffee, eggs and toast for breakfast and I’ll see you at my apartment at two.”

“You sleep, right?” Vivian rolls to her stomach and sweeps her bobbed hair behind her ear. “Like, you weren’t built to run on solar power in some Southern California laboratory?” The words are acerbic, but delivered with a soft, upward curve to her mouth, palpable relief in her voice.

“I don’t know, that was before my activation. Beep boop.” Elle laughs, and then the line goes quiet and she’s gone.

Elle is just _like that._ After she organized the beginning-of-term beach party on Cape Cod for their cohort, Vivian recalls asking her whether she’d learned how to be a hostess from her fashion design degree, or if it was an innate skillset she’d downloaded when she was initiated into Delta Nu. To her credit, Elle hadn’t even looked hurt at the time, although Vivian winces at the memory. Time has taught her that Elle is the hardest worker she's ever known, sharply intelligent, and boundlessly good-natured. 

So, of course she made them study plans. She probably did it months ago, on spring break, between her homework, job interviews, and a mud wrap.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Elle laughs a couple of weeks later when Vivian says so. “I put it together after graduation. I had a few hours after the engagement tour of Emmett's family, before we had your graduation party.”

Still, Vivian takes in her loose bun, Victoria Secret branded yoga pants, a hot pink Delta Nu hoodie, and a pen clenched between her teeth while she shuffles through the flashcards she designed for them. (Blue floral print to make them seem less intimidating, and printed with a sans-serif font to ease eye strain.) It's the most casual Elle will be seen by anyone, and Vivian knows perfectly well that she shares a special place with Elle's sorority sisters in seeing her even this disheveled. 

But seeing her this unguarded -- because Vivian knows quite well by now that for all her disarming cheer, Elle has her armor on at all times -- reminds Vivian of the time before they were really friends. The time they were rivals for Warner’s affections, or _whatever_ , and then when they were still feeling each other out. Vivian had a lot of assumptions to unlearn about women like Elle. She’d rank ordered her preferred colleges by their asshole rating, a value that was mostly comprised of the proportions of the student body who belonged to a fraternity or sorority. It makes her cringe now to think of it, but that was then and Elle is very good at placing things firmly in their timelines. That was then, when things were different than they are now.

“What if I’m the fainter,” Vivian wonders aloud, flipping through a color-coded binder of notes to reference. 

Bruiser looks up at her from his bed by the window and gives her only a moment’s regard before trotting across the hardwood floor with a cheerful patter of his nails, slumping onto the rug, just close enough that both Elle and Vivian might reach him. He looks up at her with the kind of naked expression of hope that Vivian thinks only dogs and children can really pull off.

“The fainter?” Elle looks up from her page, where she’s scribbling through a set of practice questions, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear again. Her hand reaches out on its own to pat Bruiser reassuringly on the head. “You mean the person who faints every year when they take the bar?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t even imagine you being a fainter,” says Elle, after taking a few seconds to consider the question. Her expression slides a little, from a pious sort of seriousness to a slow, blooming grin. “I bet Warner will, though.” 

“Okay, if we’re going to talk about Warner, I need to drink something better than lavender-mandarin spa water, or whatever it is you made to boost brain productivity.”

“The gossip and cocktail hour is scheduled for later tonight,” Elle assures her with a quick wink to undercut her serious tone when she adds, “But we have hours of studying to do before then.” 

The pen goes back in Elle’s mouth, this time the uncapped tip leaving a quick smudge of black ink on the side of her lip while she scours her notes. Vivian scratches Bruiser’s spine and offers Elle the a box of the Jacques Torres truffles her mother sent them from New York at Easter. 

“Aww,” Elle breathes, removing the pen from her mouth. “You were saving those for a special occasion.”

Vivian arches an eyebrow. “This isn’t a special occasion?”

“Bar prep in my grossest sweatpants? Not exactly.”

“Trust me.” Vivian shakes the box in her direction with a smile. “There’s nothing more special than this.”


End file.
